Cuba Exports Healthcare to over 50 Countries

In addition to providing significant benefits to the country;s national health system, the products of the Cuban medical-pharmaceutical industry, including biotechnology, are aiding persons in many other countries. This is so because the local Cuban pharmaceutical industry expanded their markets in 2013 with exports to over 50 nations.  This fact was highlighted recently by Victor Faife Perez, head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Services in the Ministry of Public Health who noted that these products have now become one of the main export items.

Exported items include 30 pharmaceuticals only made in Cuba and a group of generic ones that are bought by state members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and nations in Asia, Africa and even Europe.

Diagnostic equipment that allow early detection of congenital malformations, hereditary diseases and other conditions

Gustavo Sierra Gonzalez, VP of BioCubaFarma also reported that they export technologies and diagnostic equipment that allow early detection of congenital malformations, hereditary diseases and other conditions.  He referred especially to the creation of equipment for use in intensive care units, which are capable of measuring the proportion of gases in the breath of critically ill patients.  This information, he said, is very important in deciding on the type of treatment patients are to receive in an effort to save their lives.

Gonzalez noted that Cuba has manufacturing plants in different continents and that hearing aids were in high demand in these markets.  He explained that for cancer treatment, “we increase the use of stimulants and vaccines to awaken the body’s own defence and make that become the main weapon to fight the tumor without resorting, to a large extent, to chemotherapy, radiation and large surgeries.”

Source:  Granma, Cuban News Agency, Radio Ciudad